In some places the police were unbelievably violent in their quest to silence the Occupiers. Oakland, California was one of those places. . .This week the U.S. district court in San Francisco awarded a group of 12 protesters one million dollars after they sued the department for police brutality. The dollar amounts vary, with some protesters getting $20,000 and another getting as much as $500,000. . .

The settlement was a step in the right direction for the police department and it was a victory for the movement. The actions of law enforcement officials towards the Occupy protesters across the country were atrocious. Last year the University of California Davis offered each of the students who were pepper sprayed at close range by campus police $30,000…The monetary awards are small but at least they are an acknowledgement. The way the Occupy movement was silenced was a disgrace.

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What does it mean for armed authoritarian police in riot gear to “serve and protect” — and who is being protected from whom, for what, under what Authority? Are Thinking Citizens ready for this debate, finally?

What follows are comments JJ is making in an effort to marshal moral principle that might transcend a conservative man’s flinging his own authoritarian feces about, all while claiming to be a multicultural minority himself and more compassionate as proven by charitable donations than “liberals.”

About miscarriage following pepper spray, he said without a trace of self-mocking:

unlike many leftists, we believe in law and order and contesting within the system and established norms, and put our lives on the line fighting for it, and unlike anarchists and their fellow travelers, we dont worship killers of cops, judges and soldiers and dont automatically blame everything on police brutality.

That’s what got me trawled/trolled into the conversation, starting with a quote intended to describe the Authority Personality he seemed to fit and drawing a retort from him that he agreed with Fromm but “it goes both ways” (??):

The development of these characteristics is the basis for one’s own authority and therefore the basis for political democracy.” — Erich Fromm, 1957, “The Authoritarian Personality”

If the “it” that goes both ways, is maturing in reason and love (so that we can transcend animal authority and become Real Boys and Girls) then certainly I agree.

Pregnant women are a very specialized “minority” btw. Even those of us who have been one know primarily how to live as NOT one, because it can’t last long. It might be interesting for us to think about that.

First, no one is born that way or stays that way, although Mrs. Duggar comes close.. 😉

And second, the whole community has a stake in pregnant women, both literally and emotionally: she biologically holds the power within her own body (corpor-al personhood?) to bring forth life and continue the human race, yet to do it, she becomes at her most vulnerable, and is often mistreated for it both by authoritarian individuals and authoritarian society’s rules, laws and cultural hierarchies.

Pregnant women — would it help to rebrand them as citizen creators? — tend to be stunned/shocked/struck (all violent weaponized police control concepts, think about THAT!) by just how dramatically their status change brings out the “authoritarian” in personalities! People get proprietary, want to touch us and tell us what to do and not do, where to be or not be, what to ingest or not, etc etc etc. They call it protection the same way cities and campuses are claiming police violence against peaceful citizens is protection. The same way America’s war-waging is called the defense department . . .

We could have our own reasonable and loving mature debate on, say,

RESOLVED: This culture is more authoritarian toward citizen creators and their corpor-al personhood than toward job creators and corporate personhood.

The Oakland Police Department fired tear gas on Occupy Oakland demonstrators Tuesday night as they marched through downtown, determined to reclaim the camp that officers destroyed that morning. As the marchers zigged and zagged in search of safe ground, authorities bombarded and barricaded the activists into a drawn-out stalemate that resulted in further arrests.

The local police’s use of force seriously injured an Occupy activist and Iraq War veteran.

Scott Olsen, 24, remains sedated on a respirator, in stable but critical condition at Oakland’s Highland Hospital after being hit in the head with a police projectile.

. . .New video posted to YouTube suggests that Olsen was hit [in the face] at close range with a tear-gas canister. After demonstrators rush to Olsen’s aid, an Oakland cop waits a few beats before lobbing a second tear-gas canister at the crowd. They are attending to Olsen when the canister explodes, sending smoke everywhere.

Rubio made the exile story a central theme of his political biography, telling one audience during his Senate campaign, “Nothing against immigrants, but my parents are exiles.” . . . in elevating exile roots over the apparent reality of his parents’ more conventional exodus, Rubio risks setting up a tension point with the country’s Hispanic voters — most of whom are Mexican American and have immigrant friends or ancestors who did not have access to the virtually instant legal status now granted to Cubans who make it into the United States.

At issue, in part, is Rubio’s telling of why his mother returned to Cuba.

In Politico, Rubio wrote: “In February 1961, my mother took my older siblings to Cuba with the intention of moving back. My father was wrapping up family matters in Miami and was set to join them. But after a few weeks, it became clear that the change happening in Cuba was not for the better. It was communism. So in late March 1961, just weeks before the Bay of Pigs Invasion, my mother and siblings left Cuba and my family settled permanently in the United States.

In the 2009 interview, Rubio said his mother went back to Cuba to tend for his grandfather, who had been hit by a bus. (Her father came to the U.S. in the 1950s, Rubio’s office acknowledged to NPR, but went back at some point.)

“And in Cuba at the time, I mean, when you were in the hospital, they didn’t have, like, you know, meals or anything. Your family had to bring the food and they had to take care of you. So my mom went back with my sister and my brother to take care of her father in 1960 and my dad stayed behind working.

“Well, when the time came to come home, the Cuban government wouldn’t let her, so my dad was here in Miami working and desperate because his family – they would let my sister come because she was a U.S. citizen, but they wouldn’t let my brother and my mom come. And they would go to the airport every day for nine months, waiting to be let go and finally were able to come, so it was very frightening. And I think that’s when they knew for sure that that’s not the place they wanted to be.”

Records provided by Rubio’s office show his mother, Oria, entered Havana on Feb. 27, 1961, and she left on March 29, 1961.

Rubio says she never returned, and that his parents could not because of Castro, making them exiles.

So that’s a date problem piled on top of another date problem. Nine months is how long it takes to give birth to a whole new life (power of story!) but nine days or a couple of weeks that just SEEM longer because you’re disillusioned and have a couple of children in tow without Dad around, while understandable, well, not quite so powerful a story.

The Littlest Exile, refused the same open-arms American sanctuary that Marco Rubio's parents exploited for many years and lied to him about? Or The Littlest Illegal, caught by the "center right" law-and-order authoritarian America that Rubio supports, respecting parental rights and enforcing Cuba's claim?

Where did Marco Rubio come down on that controversy and how does he explain the differences today, between his exile power of story and poor Elian’s? FOXy bad-boy Brietbart’s site might offer a clue to the disconnect for Rubio.

Are you an “exile” from a government if you leave years before it comes to power, or would “immigrant” looking for a better life (like those from Mexico viewed suspiciously by his party’s politics?) be more fair and truthful a description? Suppose you Read the rest of this entry »

“You know, we don’t need a lot more anthropologists in the state. It’s a great degree if people want to get it, but we don’t need them here. I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering, math degrees.

That’s what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on.”

Think of it as electoral politics, not education policy or even jobs policy. Have you learned to translate rhetoric for reality yet? Mother Jones is getting the hang of it. This is no different than voter suppression laws masterminded by R-think tanks and pushed through R-dominated states all over what’s left of this once-great union. (“union”=ironic term in itself, these days.)

Florida’s unpopular tea party governor, Rick Scott, wants more of the state’s youths to pick up college degrees… but only if the degrees are useful to corporations and don’t teach students to question social norms.

. . .As opposed to conservative-friendly disciplines like economics and business management, liberal arts produce more culturally aware and progressive citizens, inclined to challenge ossified social conventions and injustices.

Eliminate cultural and social sciences from public colleges, and you’ll ultimately produce fewer community organizers, poets, and critics; you’ll probably churn out more Rotarians, Junior Leaguers, and Republican donors.

The debate is only starting over FSU (is it Florida State University or For Sale University?) and its decision to embrace a $1.5 million pledge from . . . one of the conservative billionaire brothers at Koch Industries, to be used for hiring in the economics department. In exchange, Koch’s representatives get to “screen and sign off on” the hires, essentially winning the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.

Not just here and not just the Koch brothers, of course. No, that would be something the rest of you could blow off. But this isn’t:Read the rest of this entry »

“They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen.
They were wrong.”

The real news is that this isn’t just about the conservative anti-government Murdoch-dominated nation across the pond. The real news (and it shouldn’t be news to anyone with half a brain during a half-century on this planet at least) is that although this picture shows the UK going up in smoke, that’s no help or comfort for us in the US.

The real news and the real history and the real science — if not the real ethics and morality and values of any religion, philosophy or culture — all show a very clear picture, that “They” is US.

JJ’s note: this was drafted last month when I was pretty hot about it, so I set it aside to cool off. Well, I did cool off about THIS but only because everything else has me even hotter now! (At least it kept me from blogging the Casey Anthony debacle as yet another Florida shame.)

So I just reread it and it’s not wrong or incomplete, just pissy. To get it out of the draft file and make room for new and bigger outrage, here it is:

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What a discouraging “choice” . . .

After bullying his way into our state’s governorship with $70 million he bilked from taxpayers, corporate fraudster Rick Scott quickly forced out Florida’s education commissioner (who himself was no prize — he’d come to what used to be called public service from a for-profit testing company, to put even more misplaced emphasis on said testing to dominate the lives of teachers and kids.)

Yesterday Scott got what he wanted, yet another weapon in his grand scheme to destroy our common wealth, an even more direct dismantler of public education, a career-long panderer to corporate interests in education sold with soothing sounds of concern for kids and schools: Read the rest of this entry »

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